Proving HALT Works

Abstract

Kirk and Fred discuss the challenge of showing those new to limit discovery using HALT and proving does find relevant future field issues that either already have occurred in a new released product, or in a product under development.

Key Points

Join Kirk and Fred as they discuss finding potential weaknesses in a new or established product using HALT, and how we can connect the weakness to field reliability, first, if  the field issue has already been corrected and all products have been retrofitted with a fix, and second, those weaknesses in development that are found in “conditions the product will never experience in the field (HALT)”
Topics include:

• The challenge of proving the relevance of a failure under HALT is very dependent on the weakness found. Failures such as component spacing and shorting are typically catastrophic, and most engineers will quickly correct them in the design. Other failures, such as a significant repeating transient voltage spike that damages an I/O interface, will be more challenging to link to field issues if they have not already been observed.
• Comparing limits and observing large distributions of those limits among the three or more samples used in HALT can help establish the case for the lot or manufacturing variation leading to weak products.
• Many rush into new product development to HALT before known failures and weaknesses are corrected. Before HALT can be useful, all the prototypes must function correctly, and all time-zero failures must be corrected.

Enjoy an episode of Speaking of Reliability. Where you can join friends as they discuss reliability topics. Join us as we discuss topics ranging from design for reliability techniques to field data analysis approaches.

SOR 963 Proving HALT WorksKirk Gray

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Show Notes

Please click on this link to access a relatively new analysis of traditional reliability prediction methods article from the US ARMY and CALCE titled  “Reliability Prediction – Continued Reliance on a Misleading Approach”. It is in the public domain, so please distribute freely. Trying to predict reliability for development is a misleading a costly approach.

Here is a link to Kirk’s article “Thermal HALT– A Tool for Discovery of Signal Integrity and Software Reliability Issues”

You can now purchase the most recent recording of Kirk Gray’s Hobbs Engineering 8 (two 4 hour sessions) hour Webinar “Rapid and Robust Reliability Development – 2022 HALT & HASS Methodologies Online Seminar” from this link.

For more information on the newest discovery testing methodology here is a link to the book “Next Generation HALT and HASS: Robust design of Electronics and Systems” written by Kirk Gray and John Paschkewitz.